What does the year 2040 look like? Are you ready for it?

The year is 2040. To go into work, you connect to a computer system that you command with your thoughts. It manages your senses to make you feel like you are walking into the corporate office even though you are sitting in your home office. The sights, sounds, smells, touch, and taste all assure you that you’ve gotten to work on time in 2040.

We will either move more towards a tool-supported lifestyle, or a parallel-virtual world. We will definitely benefit from both, however I predict the parallel-virtual world to be our main game changer for our day-to-day jobs. Your senses could be teleported to anywhere in the virtual world. With the help of this parallel-virtual world, the professional would be self-contracted and working for several organizations at the same time on several project-based jobs with colleagues and teams from all over the world. Your online professional profile has points based on previous positions and contracts completed, degrees collected, certifications received, and designations i.e. an advanced version of LinkedIn.

So many movies, TV shows, and books try to envision what the future looks like. It’s captivating to try to imagine the world in the future; what it means for you and your family and how to prepare for it. Some careers didn’t even exist 20 years ago. What if you could discover the next game-changer in any industry or create a new industry all-together? Would a quick glimpse into the future help with that ambition?

In 2010, I had the privilege of presenting at a competition called Focus 2040, held by McMaster University’s DeGroote School of Business. The competition had contestants present their predictions for the workforce 30 years into the future; the year 2040. The above description is what I predicted. Every so often, a new article or finding supports something from my predictions and it’s exciting.